Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Begins

December 4, 1993

The Space Shuttle Endeavour captures the Hubble Space Telescope to begin the first servicing mission of the flawed satellite. Over the next 5 days a variety of repairs and upgrades are completed, most notably the installation of the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) modules that together were able to compensate for the flaw in the Hubble’s main mirror. Once these corrections were made, the Hubble Space Telescope was, after 3 years, finally able to fulfill its promise of delivering detailed imagery that was not possible with Earth-based telescopes.